SERMON - True Unity Always Includes Division
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Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
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Toxicity
30
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Hate speech
27
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Summary
Ephesians 4:7-16 What does it mean to be a teacher of God's Word? What is the role of revelation, interpretation, and application in good preaching? What role does the word of God play in the teaching of the Word of God?
Transcript
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Next week, Lord willing, we will begin our series through the book of Ezra.
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And so, more often than not, the steady diet of preaching here at Covenant Bible Church is not only expositional, but expository.
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All that means is that expositional means that there's always going to be an exposition of a primary text of Scripture.
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That the man of God, if he is faithful, he does not come before the people of God and say,
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I have a dream, or I have a strategy, or I have an idea.
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Good preaching, I believe, is comprised of three primary components.
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That would be revelation, interpretation, and application.
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The only revelation that is valid, that is legitimate, that is infallible, inerrant,
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So the revelation and good preaching should be a primary text of Scripture.
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then interpretation is the first availability for human error to enter the equation but by God's
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grace we seek to be those who teach God's word knowing that they will be held to greater account
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we seek to be good students of God's word rightly dividing the word of truth so that the revelation
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which is infallible the Bible is improperly and rightly interpreted exegeted and then lastly
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application saying this is God's word this is what God means by his word and then lastly this
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is how we should live in light of what God has said in his word and so good preaching I believe
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is revelation interpretation application and you can do that with isolated passages of scripture
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and if you've been with us over the the previous months that's what we've been doing is we've been
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bouncing around each week always having a primary text of scripture I haven't come and said I have
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an idea. I have a strategy. I say, I have a text. There's something in God's Word. But this will be
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the last week that we do bouncing around isolated texts of Scripture. That's expositional if you're
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expositing a primary text of Scripture. But expository, not only expositional, but expository
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preaching is the idea that we're going to go text by text by text in sequence. And so more often
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than not always, we are committed to expositional preaching having a text. But more often than not,
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not always, but most of the time, we're committed not only to expositional preaching, I have a text,
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but expository preaching, I'm going to go from start to finish through whole books of the Bible
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so that we're not just getting an isolated text that may or may not be taken out of context,
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but we're getting a whole book of the Bible. And so that's what we've done with the book of Hebrews.
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We did that with the book of Joshua, and we're going to be doing that, Lord willing, starting next Lord's Day with the book of Ezra.
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For today, our last week of expositional but not expository preaching, bouncing around, our primary text for today is Ephesians chapter 4, verses 7 through 16.
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I got into some of this principle in Scripture of unity and different kinds of unity last
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week, and I decided that it would be helpful, I believe, for our church to address this
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So this is a concept, biblical concept, that I addressed in part last week, but I'm going
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So let's go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.
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Again, our text for today is Ephesians chapter 4, verse 7 through 16.
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when i finish reading the text i'm going to say this is the word of the lord at which point i
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would appreciate very much if you would respond by saying thanks be to god one final time our
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text is ephesians chapter 4 verse 7 through 16 the bible says this but grace was given to each
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one of us according to the measure of christ's gift therefore it says when he ascended on high
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he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men in saying he ascended what does it mean
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but that he also descended into the lower regions the earth he who descended is the one who also
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ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things and he gave the apostles the
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prophets the evangelists the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for
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building up the body of christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
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the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that
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we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of
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doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth
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in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole
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body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is
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working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is the word of the
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Lord. All right, please be seated. Let's go ahead and dive right in. By way of introduction, I've
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written the following. There are several passages of scripture that address the importance of unity
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within the church through common care through love and charity toward one another however
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Ephesians chapter 4 verses 7 through 16 is unique in the sense that it addresses the equal importance
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the equally important need of unity in the church not only in the way we love one another
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care love and charity but unity within the church through conviction doctrine and truth
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that we don't merely want to have unity with one another due to charity amidst disagreement,
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but preferably we would like to have unity as the church by having agreement. We want to have
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charity towards one another, and there are times in this life, because of sin, sin mars everything,
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including our understanding of biblical doctrine. And so because of a presence of sin, we don't,
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even within the church, as Christians, we don't all agree on what precisely truth is. Now, if we
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are, in fact, Christians, we're going to agree on doctrinal truth as it pertains to primary
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theological doctrine. This is why theological triage, for lack of a better phrase or label,
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is vitally important. It's important that we know truth, but it's also important that we rightly or
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properly value different truth, right? So the truth of the Trinity trumps the truth of head
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coverings. I think head coverings are important. I don't talk about it all the time, but I've talked
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about it a couple times and usually get in trouble because people say, well, that's not
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progressive. That seems misogynistic. You think women should cover their heads? That's not in
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line with feminism? And I respond by saying, yes, I am patriarchal. And according to you,
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a misogynist. In biblical terms, I'm not a misogynist. But according to you, if some
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leftist says that I'm a misogynist, then I know I'm doing well. And if the average evangelical
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Christian, this one hurts, calls me a feminist or a misogynist, I also know that I'm doing well.
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Because most evangelicals are feminists today. So all that being said, the point is,
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head coverings versus the trinity which one's more important the trinity right so uh that's
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not relativism uh but that is theological triage right so it's just like like anatomy you know or
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or when it comes to health um you know you can have uh some kind of health problem i'm not i'm
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not going to give examples because i i will not know what i'm talking about and uh and it'll become
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the parent very quickly. But let's just say, you know, you can have something that's wrong with
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your body. And it's objectively wrong. We're not relativists. It's not like, well, you know,
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you see that as a detriment. But some people over here see it as an improvement. And it's progressive
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and it's good. No, there are certain things that are just objectively, universally across the board.
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This is bad. But that doesn't mean that all ailments are equally bad, right? If you have
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something bad that happened with your big toe, you know, that that is not on the same plane
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has something bad going on with your heart, right?
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Now you can have two things and say both are true
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but one truth is more important than the other.
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And yet one truth still remains more valuable than the other.
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So within the church, if we are in fact Christians,
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No debate, no disagreement on primary doctrine,
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So if somebody says, hey, you believe in the Trinity
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and I don't, but we're both brothers in Christ,
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the proper response is, no, you're going to hell.
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but I pray that by God's grace that you might become one.
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Soteriology is just a theological term for salvation.
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Not every doctrine pertaining to salvation is primary,
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But the primary ones are primary. I'll give you an example. The five solas. The five solas, sola just being a Latin word for alone, like soul. This is the sole reason, the only reason, exclusive, alone.
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The five solas are, and this is not my idea, I didn't come up with this yesterday, this has been argued for hundreds of years, the five solas are non-negotiable.
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The five solas all pertain to salvation in some form of another.
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Soteriology, salvation, how God saves, what salvation even is, the need for salvation, and the method of God that he's determined in his sovereignty for how he saves sinners unto himself.
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So the five solas all deal with salvation, and they're all primary doctrine, which means to deny the solas is ultimately to be outside of the umbrella of Orthodox Christianity.
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It is to be other than Christian. It is, therefore, in other words, to be non-Christian.
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which just so happened to also be the number five,
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and still that person could be a brother or sister in Christ.
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Now, again, does that mean that the doctrines of grace,
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and that these doctrines are not empirically true?
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I'm talking about, I'm talking about Calvinism. Sometimes, you know, you say doctrines of grace
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or reformed, right? And a lot of these, and those are good words. But a lot of times it's,
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the motive is to avoid the word Calvinism. But I don't avoid that word because I think it's a good
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word. And people, well, Calvinism, that means you follow John Calvin. You follow a man. I follow
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Christ. That's stupid. Just cut that out. You know, come up with a better argument. When I say
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calvinism people say well you know creeds and confessions and doctrines you know no creed but
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christ just give me the bible so well the bible's a really big book and and i don't always have the
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time to explain you know 2500 pages to somebody passing by who asked me you know what what i
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believe all right so it's helpful uh to be and and someone who says no creed but christ the question
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that you should immediately ask is this who's christ right and then they say well what do you
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mean? Well, is he God or is he man or is he fully God and fully man? That one. Was he born of a
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virgin? Was he conceived? And within about a few minutes, it's like, great, you just confessed
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the Nicene Creed. Wouldn't that have been easier if you just started with that? You think you're
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so smart. That's the problem with our generation. We're smarter than everybody, which is not true.
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IQs have actually been going down. So in real terms, we're done. We're real done. And if you
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want to hedge protection against your own dumbness, and I have plenty of it myself, one way to protect
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yourself against that is to read intelligent men. And for the record, most of them exist before
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World War I and World War II. So if you want to be safe and you want to read truth, don't read
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anybody who is currently alive or somebody who lived recently. And you don't have to go back
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far. You don't have to read Athanasius. You don't have to necessarily read Augustine, although those
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are good reads. But really, you only have to go back about 100 years, about 80 years even.
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As long as you can get back before the weak gods entered into Western civilization, inclusivism,
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diversity, openness. Diversity is our strength, but diversity not about ethnicity, but about
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ideas. You believe something. Relativism is a good thing rather than objective truth. Everything
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becomes interpersonal, atomistic, individualistic, society, the subjective reigning supreme over the
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objective. All those ideas are bad. Every single one of them. These are bad ideas that were used
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to destroy Western civilization because we were too strong. And we were strong because of Christendom,
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not because of bloodlines, not because of ethnicity, not because of DNA. We were strong
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because the Christian worldview turns out is true. And when a society, when a culture believes
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the truth of God and begins to apply those truths to every single realm of life, including
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mathematics and engineering and medicine and politics and the whole nine yards, guess what
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happens with that civilization? It's blessed. It's blessed. So Christendom built the West.
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Classical liberalism and principled pluralism appeared to be working, but only because they
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were working off the fumes, running off the fumes of a prior Christian worldview. And now those
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fumes have run dry. In comes post-modernism, in comes secularism, the subjective reigning supreme
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over the objective, and all of a sudden, you know, people don't know what a boy is anymore.
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And in a real objective sense, IQs have gotten lower, right? That's what happens. You abandon
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Christ. One thing that you'll find through the Proverbs is a direct correlation between foolishness
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and wickedness. Meaning you abandon Christ, you've done that which is wicked, but you've also done
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that which is dumb. That sin actually makes someone a fool. The fool says in his heart,
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there is no God. It's not just the wicked denies the truth of God or the mere existence of God.
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It's not just sinister. It's not just morally wrong. It's also foolish and dumb and stupid.
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And the Bible uses that word. Proverbs says the stupid, the ignorant, the foolish. And those two
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things are always tied together. Wisdom and morality, right? Wisdom and righteousness.
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They're like two peas in a pod. They go hand in glove. Likewise, foolishness and wickedness
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will always, they're twins. They're conjoined twins. They're never separated. They always will
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follow one another. And as Western civilization has rejected truth, that is an immoral decision,
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a wicked decision, but it has given way to the immediate fruit and progressively gradually
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growing fruit of foolishness. You reject Christ, that's bad. It's morally bad. And your IQ just
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got lower. You just became dumber. Congratulations. So all that being said, my point is that with
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western civilization making this point real quick and then going back with western civilization
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the strength the strength of europe and the strength of these united states of america
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was its devotion to christ and its devotion to the truth of christ found in the word of god
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and not only in theory that's one more part that i'll add it wasn't just this is true and we agree
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and give our assent to this truth on a theoretical plane in a esoteric sense no no no the puritans
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the covenanters they believed if this is true then we should obey we should live it out we should
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apply this truth in tangible ways not just theoretical but but not only in the theoretical
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but in the practical and that was the the success of the west from constantine to king alfred um all
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the way, you know, right now, like me and every other, you know, Christian guy between the age of
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15, you know, and, and 85, you know, I'm reading Defenders of the West. I saw something on Twitter
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the other day that was funny. It showed like a little kid who was like wearing the costume of
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a crusader and said, this is how every little kid's going to be dressed up next Halloween,
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because their dad is reading about the crusades and, you know, and getting red-pilled on the
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Christians and, you know, and that, hey, maybe the crusades weren't quite as bad as revisionist
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history has made it sound, you know, and Charlemagne, maybe he was actually a great guy, you
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know, and Richard the Lionheart and Duke Gregory and all these guys. And so anyways, that's the
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cool thing right now. If you want to be in the end, if you have a groaning suspicion that you
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are missing out, if you're feeling a sense of FOMO, I'll tell you right now, the end thing
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is to read about the Crusades and to say they were not perfect, but a lot better than people
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saying, right? That's the cool thing to do. And then you don't, you don't have to feel like you're
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missing out. But all that being said, my point is from Constantine, I mean, 1,500 years of Christendom.
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That's what built the West. That's what built the West. It wasn't, it wasn't merely, there are,
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in God's providence, there are certain things. America is pretty great geographically, right?
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There is something to be said for 17,000 navigable miles of rivers in the United States. And I
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believe it's like it's either 17,000 or 15,000, but then there's only about a comparable amount
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of navigable rivers in the rest of the world all combined. So we have an equal amount in our
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country of rivers that are actually able to navigate with large ships for transporting
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goods and resources in our country equal to the rest of the world combined. Is that a factor to
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america's success uh-huh probably i think so um certain resources natural resources the fact just
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just the topography and the geography in terms of of defense right that on on both the east and the
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west were guarded by oceans right that's just that's a lot easier to defend than being a small
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country in the middle of the middle east right and to the north there's no threat there because
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they're canadians you know and and to the south there is a massive threat we call it an invasion
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it is an invasion but it is actually a threat that's easy to neutralize if we have politicians
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that cared but we don't but we'll pray and we'll see what happens that's a long story so anyways
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all that being said yeah that lent towards america's success there are certain practical
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things even that's still within the sovereignty and providence of god but it's not only that
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it's not only that the the key factor is the christian worldview uh that america was not just
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blessed by god's providence but uniquely blessed in its obedience to god's word to god's word so
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then how do you stop something like that because you're you become at some point so blessed and so
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advanced and so well defended and strong and it's just you're punching way above your weight you you
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you have resources that are exponentially by multiple times 10 10 times 10 times 10 times
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You can't defeat them with blood, sweat, and tears.
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But you can do it by pumping their kids with TikTok.
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right like in china you watch tiktok videos i'm sure you're aware of this teenagers watch it and
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it's like how to solve this math problem and that's the only tiktok available to teenagers in
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china uh but in america it's like how to dance like a cat you know and because and that's
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intentional that's not an accident it's and again c.a iq's lower iq's lower uh but the correlation
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ultimately being, it's not just a practical phenomenon. It is a spiritual phenomenon. Rejection
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of Christ, rebellion against Christ, foolishness and wickedness always coming as a pair. So how do
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you destroy the West? Well, you do it ultimately through ideology. I would recommend there's two
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great essays. They're collected and bound together in a little booklet. It's maybe 65 pages long.
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it's called the fate of empires and basically just tracks you know major empires the babylonian
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empire ottoman empire persians and medes you know and then rome would be one of the big ones and
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and how did all these empires all at a certain point because america should be thought i'm not
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saying that we should be this um but but this is what we have been america at some level should
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be thought of an empire rather than a nation now i for the record would love to just be a a nation
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or a republic, and not the world police. But we have been. That's just the reality. We have been
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more than just a nation. We've been an empire. And so America, I think, tracks with other historic
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empires. And when you look at empires on the whole that became superpowers, like Rome, the Roman
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Greco Empire that was completely in control over the known world at the time, how does something
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like that fall and and there are certain uh characteristics that were that were found in
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every single major empire that led towards its ultimate demise one of them for the record uh
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fun information one of them is altruism um but but an over emphasis on altruism meaning uh that
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these empires uh they became so powerful that eventually the people felt a sense of guilt
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And to relieve their consciences, to assuage their consciences, they decided to be generous and inviting and inclusive and giving, altruistic, but to a point where it became suicidal.
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and then there wasn't the central mold any longer
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It turns out diversity was not Rome's strength.
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brothers and sisters. So when I talk about diversity, I'm not talking about black and
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white ethnicity. I'm talking about diversity of convictions, truths, ideas, commitments.
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I'm talking about diversity of tradition, diversity of religion. These are not strengths.
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It is not a strength to say, you know what's great about our country? About 15% worships the
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triune god but what's really cool is that another 10 worships satan and another 10 worships islam
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but i repeat myself and another 10 worships you know talmudic judaism but i repeat myself right
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so just satan fill in the blank satan satan say that's not a strength when we say principled
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pluralism josiah king josiah would have heard that as polytheism and polytheism is just a placeholder
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it diversity is not our strength not diversity of religion or tradition or culture again get the
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ethnic the ethnicity thing is not the issue we've pinned so much on that but that's not the thing
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okay so all that being said how do you destroy the west well you you end and this gets us back
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to ephesians believe it or not the way you destroy the west is you tell them unity is all about love
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for one another in the midst of zero unity when it comes to our beliefs. That's not right.
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And that's the kind of unity that the West has adopted. And right on schedule, like a German
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freight train, right? It's never late. Right on schedule, the evangelical church of the West
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adopted the very same thing. And the evangelical church, the very people of God, began to pick up
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that same rhetoric and boast as though it was somehow a benefit to say you know what's great
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about our church what's great about our church is we really love each other even though we all have
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different theological convictions how is that how is that great because again we're not relativist
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and if you all have differing theological convictions that actually contradict one another
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then at best, at best, only one of you is right and everyone else is wrong, which I feel like I
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don't have to bring it home, but I will just to make it painfully clear. If one of you is right
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and everyone else is wrong, that's what you do not call a strength. That's not strength.
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That is wicked, which is also synonymous, comes in a pair with dumb.
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It's not loving to your neighbors, even your unbelieving neighbors who don't know Christ
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And then sister so-and-so, they shared the gospel with me.
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Not helpful. And just to tie up a loose end here, going back to the doctrines of grace in the five
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solos, all right? So just in case, because people are always new, and I don't want to take for
00:28:07.100
granted that you know all these things. I use big words from time to time because I'm not the
00:28:11.640
smartest guy in the world. It makes me feel better about myself. But no, that's not why. It's because
00:28:15.360
I want to tell you, well, that is true, but that's not why. That is true. But I use these words
00:28:22.300
because they are theological words, and I want you to learn those words. But what I try to do
00:28:54.760
that he summarized Jesus' doctrine of salvation
00:29:01.540
You're not saying I follow Calvin instead of Christ.
00:29:11.420
The ones that were spelled out very clearly by John Calvin,
00:29:24.400
everyone does that right a confession of faith whether it's 1689 or westminster or the helvetic
00:29:30.340
confession or the heidelberg everybody has a confession you might say i reject all those i
00:29:35.060
just i just read the bible okay but you have an interpretation of the bible which means this you
00:29:39.720
have a confession but instead of it being a tried and true and tested confession over hundreds of
00:29:44.400
years that was actually formed together in ecumenical councils by by not one man but dozens
00:29:58.280
Which again, it's just a lot of circles in the sermon.
00:30:09.340
you guys feel free, hold me accountable and say,
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00:30:17.620
What I mean is everybody is reading the scripture and coming up with what it means.
00:30:24.300
And you're either doing that alone in isolation without the training and the equipping and
00:30:31.540
the ability to do it well, or you're submitting to better men than yourself and saying, I
00:30:39.960
And none of that, that doesn't mean confessions are infallible.
00:30:42.680
Only this book, the word of God, is infallible without error.
00:30:46.780
So when I say I submit to the Second London Baptist
00:31:04.820
and I think their explanation of the interpretation,
00:31:09.460
is better than the one that I could come up with.
00:31:21.800
the way that the late great R.C. Sproul put it,
00:31:39.900
It's either the confession that exists in your own head
00:31:44.100
or it's another confession, but you do have a confession, you do have a creed, you are a
00:31:48.820
theologian, so be a good one. And one of the ways to be a good one is to submit to better theologians
00:31:54.160
than yourself, to exercise humility. And one of the pinnacle illustrations or examples of
00:31:59.780
arrogance is pretending as though we're the first people in all of human history that have ever had
00:32:07.420
wisdom. That all of our forefathers were fools. And that's part of the reason why IQs have dropped
1.00
00:32:14.680
and why we've become so foolish is because we're arrogant. Humility and wisdom. So I said
1.00
00:32:21.360
righteousness and wisdom. Another thing that we could say from the book of Proverbs, humility
00:32:24.700
and wisdom, two peas in a pod. And arrogance and foolishness always go hand in glove. They're also
00:32:32.100
two peas in a pod. Where you find an arrogant man, you will find an ignorant man. And vice versa,
1.00
00:32:38.360
where you find an ignorant man, you will find an arrogant man. Our generation is so prideful,
1.00
00:32:44.380
thinking we're the first moral people to ever be born. And likewise, we've become, because of our
00:32:49.860
pride, so ignorant, so foolish. The most informed generation, more information than ever before,
1.00
00:32:57.260
more access to information, but so little wisdom. Because wisdom is not mere knowledge. Wisdom is
00:33:04.580
knowledge applied. Not just knowing what exists, but knowing how things work, how to live in God's
00:33:13.260
world, how to take this fact and even having the discernment to determine whether or not it is
00:33:19.300
in fact a fact. And then if it is a fact, taking that fact and saying, okay, so what? This is true,
00:33:26.040
but then how then shall we live as Francis Schaeffer would have said how does this apply if
00:33:31.680
this then that that's when you've begun to embark into the realm of wisdom when you're thinking if
00:33:38.320
this is true then I should do the following I should live like this so all that being back to
00:33:45.300
this diversity is our strength which is a lie it's not true diversity of thought is not a strength
00:33:50.720
diversity of conviction is not a strength that gets us back to Ephesians 4 and the importance
00:33:55.440
of unity. And it's not just unity of love. As you've sat in churches, those of you who have
00:34:02.040
grown up in the church, you've been in the Christian church, evangelical church your entire
00:34:06.100
life, you've probably heard at least a dozen, if not more, sermons over the years on the subject
00:34:12.160
of unity. But I would bet that the only sermons you've heard of on unity have only ever addressed
00:34:19.140
one biblical kind or type of unity, namely a unity of what I'm going to call a unity of love.
00:34:27.380
It's a unity that emphasizes love and common care. And that is biblical, it is right, but it is not
00:34:37.500
exclusively or exhaustively what unity in biblical terms is about. That is only one type of unity.
00:34:45.140
It is right. It is biblical, but it's incomplete. It is right. It is biblical, but it's not the
00:34:52.000
whole enchilada. So what's another kind of unity? I would submit to you that there are at least in
00:34:57.900
biblical terms, two primary types of unity, not merely one. One is a unity of love. The other
00:35:03.620
is unity of faith. One unity of love is a unity of common care. The other is a unity of common
00:35:10.920
convictions. That it's not just unity in the way that we care for one another, whether there be
00:35:16.820
agreement or disagreement, but it's also a unity that doesn't just stem from the heart, but a unity
00:35:22.860
that stems from the mind. That we actually share the same mind of Christ, as Paul writes to the
00:35:29.440
Corinthians. That we actually have the same convictions. Not just that we all love one another,
00:35:34.440
but we all love one another and ideally we all believe the same things now to be brothers in
00:35:41.680
christ you must have a unity not just of love but a unity of faith a unity of common conviction not
00:35:48.180
merely common care at the top level top shelf of theological triage so to be just to be at a base
00:35:56.460
level a minimum to be even fellow christians you have to have unity not just of common care but
00:36:02.740
again, you could actually not have that. You could not love one another, which means you're in sin,
00:36:07.740
but you could be in sin, not loving one another, not having a unity of common care. But if you at
00:36:12.900
least have a unity of common conviction at the top level, like the Trinity, then you actually
00:36:19.040
are brothers and sisters in Christ. That's the minimum bar. That's the prerequisite, what's
00:36:24.240
required to be the people of God, to be in the church, at least the visible church, that we
00:36:29.940
would recognize this person. God alone sees the heart. Man sees the outward appearance. But for
00:36:35.200
all intents and purposes, we as fallible man should be able to look at that person and say,
00:36:39.360
you agree with this? You agree with that? You agree with this? You agree with that? Then you
00:36:43.440
are a brother in Christ. That's one of the reasons why we recite the Apostles' Creed in our liturgy
00:36:49.860
every single Lord's Day. It's because what we're doing is we are cultivating and reminding
00:36:56.120
ourselves and stirring up anew and afresh each lord's day unity unity i believe we and we say
00:37:05.120
we we believe in god the father almighty what we're saying is we are the same we agree we are
00:37:13.660
unified christ has made us one and and what are we but notice how are we doing it we're not saying
00:37:19.040
we love each other we don't go around in our liturgy we don't go around the room and pat
00:37:23.240
each other on the head and say, you look so pretty and you're so sweet and I really have
00:37:26.340
lots of fluffy feelings for you. That's not how we do it. No, no, but we are accomplishing unity
00:37:33.260
and I would argue a greater and deeper unity. And how are we doing it? We're doing it with truth.
00:37:39.440
And the truth is meant to assume the love. It's not one against the other. But what we're doing
00:37:45.380
is we're saying, we believe these same truths about God. We believe these things. We are one.
00:37:56.940
So most of the sermons that you've probably heard about unity over the years
00:38:03.900
Not unity of faith, unity of knowledge, unity of common conviction.
00:38:08.420
But that's precisely what Ephesians 4, verse 7 through 16 talks about.
00:38:13.060
The first question that we need to answer is this.
00:38:21.200
Jesus is ultimately the sovereign one, the head of the body,
00:38:24.120
and therefore the source of all the body's life and growth.
00:38:27.620
But how, what method does he utilize to grow the body?
00:38:31.300
Jesus has determined that he should use the body to grow itself.
00:38:38.700
From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped,
00:38:44.000
when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
00:38:56.620
what agency does Jesus determine in his sovereignty to use?
00:39:04.540
The body, again, the body of Christ being the church,
00:39:07.320
the people of God, the saints, Christians.
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00:39:16.620
a local church or universally, the universal church,
00:39:20.420
how does the body the church of christ grow well the body grows the body christ uses the saints
00:39:28.660
to stir one another up in love to build one another up through discipling one another the
00:39:35.680
body grows the body christ ultimately is the source as the head of the body right he's the
00:39:41.700
vine we are the branches so christ is the ultimate source and therefore sola de gloria he gets all
00:39:48.240
the glory alone. So Christ gets the glory for growing the body, but he uses the agency of the
00:39:55.000
body to grow the body. And that's not, for the record, it's not that he uses a piece of the body
00:40:01.080
to grow the rest of the body. That's not what Ephesians 4 teaches. Ephesians 4 doesn't teach
00:40:07.080
that Christ uses Joel and Connor to build up 200 other people. No, he uses all 200 to build 200.
00:40:23.160
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists,
00:40:26.120
the shepherds, and teachers to equip, to build the body.
00:40:32.820
which is the work of ministry, for building up the body,
00:40:44.120
the whole church builds the whole church. And how does the church do it? The saints themselves,
00:40:51.320
you, the members of Christ's body, you build each other up and leaders in the church come in not to
00:40:57.580
do the work of ministry, which is building the body, but rather to equip you to do the work of
00:41:02.740
ministry. So leaders don't build the body. Leaders equip the body to build the body. And all of this
00:41:09.240
comes from christ who gives the growth so christ is the source the vine that gives nutrients and
00:41:16.020
life to the branches he's the head that gives the source of life to all the body but he does it
00:41:23.100
through agency in real time in tangible practical ways and he's growing his body by using the body
00:41:31.080
and the body is effective in building the body because the body is equipped by leaders given to
00:41:37.540
the body by christ those leaders being not five but four the leaders being apostles prophets
00:41:45.100
evangelists and shepherd teachers think of it like shepherd hyphen teacher that's the way that
00:41:51.160
it actually appears in the greek so it's not five but four a shepherd teacher what's that
00:41:55.500
right it's two roles but but you know two functions but in one title one office uh so so
00:42:01.860
what office has as its two primary roles shepherding and teaching pastor so it should i
00:42:08.460
believe that the proper reading of this verse verse 11 of ephesians 4 is fourfold ministry not five
00:42:13.860
and who is it it's apostles it's um prophets it's evangelists and it's pastors and cross-referencing
00:42:21.820
over to ephesians 220 it says that he gave the apostles and prophets i said this last week i'll
00:42:27.420
recap quickly apostles and prophets to be the foundation of the church and christ jesus himself
00:42:33.700
as the cornerstone the uh the most pivotal integral part of the foundation so the apostles
00:42:40.260
and prophets i believe this is i think good theology the way that it should be read this is
00:42:44.920
reformed theology it's also cessationist theology which not everybody likes cessationist just means
00:42:50.480
believing not all but some of the gifts of the spirit have ceased okay but but the view is this
00:42:56.480
that apostles and prophets are serving, not today, but they served at a time in laying the
00:43:04.780
foundation for the church. And they are still serving today, but they're serving through the
00:43:08.920
pages of scripture. We still have the apostles and prophets working together and working in the
00:43:14.440
modern church today, but they're working through the scripture because we have the apostles and
00:43:19.020
prophets inscripturated. In general, you could say like this, prophets, Old Testament, apostles,
00:43:24.560
knew. So apostles and prophets, they were used by Christ to do various things, but one of the chief
00:43:30.600
things is to write the Bible. So what's the foundation of the church? The Bible. And who's
00:43:37.200
the central message of the Bible? Christ Jesus. He's the capstone, the cornerstone. So the foundation
00:43:42.640
of the church, right, the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth because it's planted
00:43:45.980
on the foundation of truth, infallible truth. And then the two roles, so that's apostles and
00:43:51.440
prophets so they're done because the foundation is not laid and relayed and relayed see first
00:43:57.280
corinthians chapter 3 paul says i as an expert builder laid a foundation and it does not need
00:44:02.760
to be laid again so the foundation has already been laid sufficiently fully and properly and
00:44:09.520
that's the apostles and the prophets and they still speak to this day as the word of god is
00:44:14.340
properly exegeted and applied okay so that work is done think of building a house you don't always
00:44:20.720
have the same guy from start to finish now you could but but with division of labor labor in
00:44:28.420
many cases you have teams of different guys so there's foundation layers and then they finish
00:44:34.000
and you don't see them anymore they go home and the guy who did the foundation is probably not
00:44:39.620
the guy who's going to be the plumber who's going to come in and put all the the the pipes you know
00:44:44.900
and then the electrician who's going to come and do all the wiring these are different guys and
00:44:48.380
you got framers, you got roofers, you got all these different things, right? So there's different
00:44:52.620
teams. Likewise, you got two primary teams when it comes to leaders in the church. And all these
00:44:58.400
leaders, they don't do the work of ministry. Remember the first point that I'm making, they
00:45:02.420
equip the saints, you, to do that ministry. And what is the work of ministry? That the body builds
00:45:08.120
up the body. The body builds the body. The body of Christ grows because the body of Christ is
00:45:13.600
growing the body of Christ. And the body of Christ is doing this successfully because they're
00:45:18.220
properly equipped. By who? By two waves, two teams of leaders. One team that already came and gave us
00:45:24.920
this, apostles and prophets. And then another team that uses this. This is the only authority that
00:45:31.320
the second team has, by the way. The second team, evangelists and pastors, use this. And insofar as
00:45:37.920
by the grace of God we use this properly, then that evangelist and pastor are successful in their
00:45:43.220
work to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So we had apostles and prophets, and we still have
00:45:48.040
them in a sense in the Word of God. And then we have evangelists and pastors working on the
00:45:53.800
foundation of the apostles and prophets, framing the house, coming and doing the wiring and the
00:45:59.880
plumbing and the roofing. And when it's all done, what will the end goal be? And this is the final
00:46:05.520
point of the sermon today. What will the end goal be? If you have your notes, turn it over to the
00:46:10.060
back. What is the end goal of the body's growth? This is focusing now on verse 13 and 14 of our
00:46:15.020
text verse 13 says that our goal is to build up the body until we all attain the unity of love
00:46:22.640
fluffy feelings is the goal no until we attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge not subjective
00:46:32.340
but the objective knowledge of the son of god this means that our aim is not only to have
00:46:40.860
unity of care and love, but also, it's not one against the other, but unity of care and love
00:46:47.160
and unity of faith and knowledge. Now, zoom in on these two sentences. Very important right here.
00:46:55.500
Unity of knowledge is not a politically correct concept, especially when it comes to claims about
00:47:01.400
knowing anything objectively or definitively about the Son of God, about Jesus. When someone today
00:47:08.100
He says, this is true about Jesus definitively.
00:47:19.560
This is who Jesus is, period, end of discussion.
00:47:22.940
If you disagree with me, nanny, nanny, boo-boo, you're wrong.
00:47:27.580
But to do it at all, even if you do it with the most humility and grace you could possibly muster,
00:47:33.000
you will still probably end up on the ADL's list, right?
00:47:36.460
you will still be hated hated by many why because one thing that people despise today is any claim
00:47:44.920
towards objective truth and you know how long people have hated that in one sense because of
00:47:51.620
total depravity because because the heart of man is wicked above all else because in our fallen
00:47:57.600
state apart from the saving grace that comes through christ alone through faith alone in him
00:48:02.820
alone, because man is bent towards wickedness from the womb, from his youth, there's a sense
00:48:09.200
in which all of humanity and all of human history has always hated truth. But I would argue
00:48:15.980
that particularly Western people, and particularly in the last 80 years, uniquely hates truth.
0.72
00:48:26.260
Uniquely. Particularly one kind of truth, which is what you might call true truth. It's really the
00:48:31.880
only kind of truth, but definitive, objective, universal truth. And do you know why? This is,
00:48:41.280
I'll admit, here's the disclaimer, this is overly generalized. But this is a big reason. It's not
00:48:46.700
exhaustive, but this is a big reason why. Because the last guy who made really strong dogmatic
00:48:52.380
claims was Hitler. That's a big part of it. And that's why the post-war sentiment, what I mean
0.98
00:49:00.860
by that is everything that's been believed by westerners over the last 80 years it doesn't mean
00:49:06.140
that it's always wrong but it should be read with discernment and suspicion because so much of what
00:49:11.680
america and europe has tried to do over the last century particularly the last 80 years is is set
00:49:18.840
up a hedge of protection a guard against fascism what they would deem as being authoritarianism
00:49:26.100
totalitarian uh a a strong charismatic dogmatic figure who would say this is true you don't we
00:49:34.160
don't like that guy that's a bad guy if you're wondering who's the bad guy that's that's the
00:49:37.740
bad guy you don't want to be that guy and because of that because of that what we've thought is
00:49:43.080
well instead of having strong patriarchal god-fearing but universal truth believing
00:49:50.260
absolute truth believing men the easier solution is just to have no men right you can have men in
00:49:57.740
a literal physical sense but in the proverbial sense they'll they'll all be effeminate they'll
00:50:03.860
all be weak they'll be men as lewis talked about men without chest that's what we have today we
00:50:10.500
have men without chest we have men that have been castrated and yet we tell them to be fruitful
00:50:17.240
We bid the geldings fruitful, is what Lewis says.
00:50:28.160
is because we're afraid that if you have a man,
00:50:40.220
And evangelicalism picked up on this hook, line, and sinker
00:50:44.080
and just gave it some biblically colored wrapping paper.
00:50:48.000
And so what we said is, well, a theology of suffering,
00:51:11.240
He ascended in glory and majesty and power to the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
00:51:17.220
And He promises to come back with an iron scepter and to separate the wheat from the chaff
00:51:24.800
He is not merely Messiah, meek and mild, but He is conquering King of kings and Lord of lords.
00:51:32.480
We follow Him in baptism in His death, but only so that we might follow Him in His resurrection life.
00:51:40.500
those who suffer with him might also reign with him we have been called priests and kings to reign
00:51:48.260
with the king of kings we have been given authority and splendor and majesty to rule not only suffer
00:51:56.360
that's only part of the story it's an integral part of the story you can't skip that part of
00:52:01.620
the story or you miss the heart of everything but it's only a part we suffer because we will reign
00:52:07.940
we die that we might live and God decides you don't decide you don't get to be a kamikaze
00:52:16.480
evangelical pilot you don't get to determine what role you'll play God in his sovereignty
00:52:22.000
has determined for 2 000 years of church history that some might be martyrs and that they would
00:52:27.760
reign with Christ only in the life to come but in this life here and now they only suffered
00:52:32.220
but that's not all of christian history is it it's not you have polycarp but you also have
00:52:40.180
constantine and this is why all the young guys are getting real excited about the you know
00:52:46.040
charlemagne and you know king richard the lion heart and all the all these guys are for ferdinand
00:52:51.380
i didn't even know i thought ferdinand was a movie about a bull you know turns out ferdinand
00:52:56.200
well you know was a spanish king and he was awesome and he loved jesus and he was a sinner
00:53:01.500
like you and me and he made some mistakes but he did awesome things and so all that being said
00:53:07.080
that is part of christianity but that's not the part that you've been taught you know what you've
00:53:12.220
been taught from birth you've been taught crusades were bad you've been taught any use of power is
00:53:19.640
bad you've been taught that power is that it's not merely that power can be used for evil nefarious
00:53:25.380
purposes you've been taught that power in and of itself is inherently evil right so so then what
00:53:32.860
are conservatives right so politically political application here what are conservatives whether
00:53:37.520
they be christian or not what do they always say well democrats are the real races yeah okay
00:53:43.080
duh duh democrats were they were they were literally the enslavers of course they were
00:53:49.840
the real races we know that we've known democrats were the real races for approximately let's see
00:53:54.120
uh 200 years surely we can move on from that rhetoric that's not going to win an election
00:53:59.960
or democrats or or if we if we take down the satanist statue in the capitol building in ohio
00:54:06.240
then they might take down our nativity scene no it's not equal principle pluralism diversity
00:54:13.740
is our strength classical liberalism is a joke it was always a joke it only appeared in the optic
00:54:21.580
externally successful for a short in the span of human history a very brief a breath short
00:54:28.500
span of time because the residue of christendom for 1500 years was so formidable and so strong
00:54:36.480
that it was like a gust of wind that caused that little dinky sailboat of classical liberalism to
00:54:41.880
look like it had a motor it never did never so the idea of well the satanist statue that we'll let
00:54:48.340
that exists. We'll tolerate it. It doesn't mean we like it, but we'll tolerate it so that we can
00:54:51.460
have our Christian, you know, Christmas parade. No, or here's another option. Let me, let me throw
00:54:55.520
this out. Just, you know, humbly submit it for your careful consideration. What if, what if like
00:55:00.400
Michael Cassidy, you go into the Capitol building and you take this, the Satanist statue, you behead
0.61
00:55:05.840
it, you throw it on the ground, and then you still do the Christmas parade. And you say, you know
00:55:09.380
why? You know why? Because Jesus is king. And there's political ramifications to the kingship
00:55:16.200
of Jesus. And not all cultures are equal. Because culture, coming from the Latin word cultus,
0.93
00:55:23.120
simply means worship. And not all gods are equal. There is a God above all other demonic gods. A
00:55:30.240
king above all earthly kings. A lord above all earthly lords. And blessed is the nation that has
00:55:35.860
Yahweh as its God. And so we will serve him and him alone. And there are not equal freedoms and
00:55:42.160
rights for blasphemy. Blasphemy laws were on the books in this great nation once upon a time,
00:55:47.520
and by God's grace, I'd love to see them make a comeback. And I think they will. One day. May not
1.00
00:55:54.140
be in my lifetime, but one day it will. And you know why? Because truth is not relative. It is
00:55:59.780
not subjective. It is not internal. It is not personal. There are certain truths, true truths,
00:56:05.620
real truth, that would be true, as Wilson has said, whether I was ever born or not. Whether I
00:56:11.520
live or die the truth that which is truly truth is not contingent upon me or you it would be true
00:56:19.500
whether you were ever born or not common core math two plus two will always be four it two plus
00:56:27.440
two is four in hell it's it's it's four in china it's four and in these united states it's four in
00:56:34.540
heaven it'll be four ten thousand eons from now and it was four before the foundations of the
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world relate, because it's true. It's true. And true unity is not only unity of the fields.
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I don't want to minimize that too much, because unity of love is a real thing, and it does matter.
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But it's not merely unity of love, common care. It's unity of truth, unity of conviction,
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unity of knowledge, unity of doctrine. Our strength is not being divided when it comes to our beliefs.
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And that is one of the biggest lies that incepted itself,
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I believe, right around the time after World War I and World War II
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And I think greatest generation is an appropriate title.
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But they came back, and they weren't post-millennial.
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They had seen so much atrocity, so much suffering.
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They were just, I can't believe hopeful things anymore.
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there was this sense of nihilism undergirding the American people.
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It's shifted from the Puritans, a city on a hill,
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like a mustard seed into a tree gradually over time.
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The leaven working its way through the whole batch of dough.
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It went, no, this is our moment, and we're going to give our kids everything we got,
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because eat, drink, and be married, for tomorrow we die. And then in comes the boomers.
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And the boomers got a lot. And for the record, the boomers, because I don't want to disparage,
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right? We honor our father. The boomers worked really hard. Here's the difference. Millennials
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and Gen Z, some are lazy. A lot are lazy. A lot are lazy. However, some do work hard,
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and they're frustrated. You know why? They're frustrated. It's wrong. I think, I think we give
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into the sinful temptation. It is sin. It's wrong. We'll say the boomers didn't have to work. That's
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a lie. The boomers worked hard. Here's the difference though, between a boomer and a
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millennial. Um, the boomers worked hard and their work worked. The millennial works hard
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and their work does not work. Now, some of them are just lazy and entitled and spoiled. That's
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true. But some, they're like, why work? Why? My work, when I work, it doesn't work. The boomers,
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they worked and they worked hard, but it paid. Work paid off. And now we're living in a time
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where people are rightly, sons, have been exasperated by their fathers. Precisely what
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the scripture says not to do. That has happened. And so all this being said, from that time,
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think 1940s what incepted into western the western mind and then the church was was a
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bulwark and counter-cultural nope the evangelicals do what evangelicals do they adopted it to try to
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be attractive and reach the culture and and hook line and sinker immediately compromised so sadly
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that's you know that's what evangelicals do so the the culture and the church sadly bought into
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that lie and said you know what it's all going to burn dispensational pre-millennialism jesus is
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going to come back next thursday there's no point building a city on a hill because it's all going
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to end anyways and it's all suffering but i guess you know suffering is a biblical tenant right
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suffering of the cross doctrine of the cross and you know the big thing that we want to avoid
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is strength and power because that's what ultimately lends towards corruption and evil
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never again can we ever have a hitler type and so how do you get rid of a hitler type you get
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rid of absolute truth transcendent truth dogmatic claims uh you get rid of patriarchy you get rid
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of nationalism, national pride, right? That's a bad thing. So you do globalism instead of
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nationalism. You do feminism instead of patriarchy. You do critical race theory instead of tradition.
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You do revisionist history. You do inclusive and subjective truth instead of exterior, objective,
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external truth. And that's where we've been for 80 years. And by God's grace, I think a lot of
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people are sick of it. And so I think what's going to happen, here's a little, you know, I said
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prophecy is done, but here's a little prophecy. No, it's not a prophecy. Here's a prediction
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that is fallible and could be wrong. Here's a prediction. I think that what's going to happen,
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I think R.R. Reno nailed it, right? So those are your two books. If you need to read any two books,
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you know, by the end of the year, you got, you know, like a day, you know, but you want to catch
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up on what was cool in 2023, there's really, it's only two books. It's Return of the Strong Gods
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The strong gods, he doesn't mean like actual deities,
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I can't, you know, I can't tell you the timing, but I think he's right in the concept. He's saying
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these are inevitably coming back because here's the deal. You cannot escape nature. The industrial
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revolution and technological advances have given us a sense that we can defy nature, but even that
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will only happen for a time. Eventually, nature, as one great prophet, aka Jurassic Park, once said,
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right, nature, life finds a way, right? That's literally every horror movie. Every single horror
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movie is guys thinking they can defy nature and then nature eats them right that is you know i
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just you know spoiler that every single suspense movie i've ruined because that's what it's all
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about and that there's a reason why that cliche exists because there is some truth to it and so
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i think that you know nature is eventually going to overcome and there's going to be a forced
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inevitable return to the strong gods uh globalism will uh ultimately uh fall to nationalism a return
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of nationalism. I believe that. Because globalism doesn't work. It's not sustainable. So even for
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the atheist, if he wants to survive, eventually he'll find out that two and two makes four and
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not five. And he's going to return to these things. And we will find feminism does not work.
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Critical race theory does not work. A radical subjectivism does not work. This doesn't work.
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And we will return, I believe, as a people, as a culture, even the West. Now we might be defeated
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first. I hope we're not. So we, you know, I don't know. We might all be speaking Mandarin at this
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point. I hope not. But we will return, whether we're the United States or whether we're
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something else at that point. We'll see what God in his province determines in history.
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But we will, as a people, the world will return to the strong gods. So here's the question,
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and I'll leave it with this. It's not whether but which. Remember that old adage? Not whether but
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which. You're going to have nationalism. Not whether but which. It will return. So are you
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going to have pagan nationalism or Christian nationalism? You're going to have patriarchy.
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You will. Because nature cannot be inevitably defined. You're going to have patriarchy. So
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it will be Christian patriarchy or will it be Andrew Tate? You're going to have objective
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transcendent truth right is it going to be islam or christianity someone will win out
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someone with the strong gods tradition family patriarchy nationalism patriots it will return
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because human civilization cannot inevitably survive without these truths but then the question
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is which version of these things will you have and so instead of doing the gandalf move standing
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you know on a bridge in between the bell rock and the hobbit you know and and saying you shall not
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pass here i am tim keller with a third way of a soft weak complementarianism to defend you against
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the mean patriarchy but also keep my christian card and not be a feminist like no i'm not going
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to do that instead what i'm going to do is i'm going to stick to the script and i'm going to go
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right over here and say no the strong gods do win but they should all be christian christian
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nationalism, Christian patriarchy, Christian this, Christian that, Christian that, because Christ
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is the strongest of all gods. He is King of King and Lord of Lords. And that is not mere unity of
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love and the fields, but a unity of common conviction and truth. And apart from that kind
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of unity, a nation will fall, a church will fall, your family will fall. If you think diversity,
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not color but thought cultists worship doctrine if diversity of doctrine is your strength
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you will fall and even satan knew that a house divided against itself cannot stand
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beelzebub doesn't cast out beelzebub satan isn't even dumb enough to do that only americans
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and evangelical christians unless we repent let's pray father help us to be humble
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arrogance always comes with ignorance. Help us, Lord, to be informed, not transformed, or I'm sorry,
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not conformed by this world and its culture and its lives, but transformed by knowledge, the renewing
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of our minds, being conformed more and more every day to your truth. And we pray, Lord, that this
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conforming into the image of Christ, transforming into his image, growing in knowledge, growing in
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truth, growing in doctrine, that it would also lend towards righteousness, that it would not just be
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an ivory tower doctrinal endeavor, but it would be righteousness with legs, righteousness on the
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ground, applied to every single realm of all of human society, that we would be a city on a hill.
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No, not old covenant Israel, but in a sense, a city on a hill that the nations would see that
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they would flock to christ not to these united states but to christ saying he is the arbiter
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of all truth and those nations which fear the lord will be blessed we pray this for christ's sake